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Friday, January 31, 2014

The past week or so has been COMPLETE ASS so I haven't done much in the way of carding lately. I did manage to get my favorite hawkee set sorted and paged out and bindered and scanned tho. Here's a wantlist. If you collect old Topps hockeys, I have a healthy pile of doubles from the '70s lying around that can be traded to you.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

I was lucky enough to get a brand new pack of cards courtesy of Mr. Phungo, the Phillie aphicionado. Let's jump right in, shall we?

First card in the pack is Howie Bedell, outfirler for the Milwaukee Braves. Howie played 58 games for the Braves in 1962 and got 2 Topps cards to commemorate the moment. Howie also played 9 games for the Phillies in 1968, so I'm somewhat surprised this didn't turn out to be possibly his first Phillies card. Maybe it's a variation?

Next up, Sarah Jane Sands who played catcher for Rockford Peaches of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. So far I've gotten a Brave and a Peach in the pack, I'm sensing a theme.

Uggles! Signing a ball for some lucky fan. If you can't hit 'em, sign em. Uggla was left off the playoff roster in favor of Elliot Johnson who was dropped after the season. Uggla hasn't gone anywhere and it's his second base job to lose in spring training. He'll probably lose it to Tommy LaStella. I really should stop making fun of Dan as I'm actually very thankful that he's taking a lot of heat off of BJ Upton. BJ's totally going to break out this year I tell you. I believe in Melvin.

Not a Brave, but a former Brave that should have stayed a Brave but ended up a Phillie. Least year I was discussing with a friend how Kevin had quitely had a solid career and it was amazing that he was still pitching in the league. And now he up and retired on me and made me feel old. Dangit, Kevin.

Freddie! The Braves' star first baseman who is in the process of being Fred McGriffed by Joey Votto and Paul Goldschmidt. Freddie's the best hugging first baseman in the league at least!

OMG EARLY LEADER FOR 2014 CARD OF THE YEAR. It might be harder to beat Simba for the NL Shortstop Gold Glove than to beat The Natural.

El Oso Phungo! Not technically a rookie card, but it is a First Phungo Card which is just as good, probably. I'll put this photo of Gattis with the swanky hockey style mask up against any photo on any card of Evan put out this year.

Got some insert buybacks in the pack too! How lucky!

Gattis Hot Pack!!! and a Bowman Something Or Other rookie card too! That I think I don't have but am not sure because all these Bowman sets just sort of blur together after a while. It's shiiiiiiiiiny though.

*falls off chair*
*flails*
*twitches a bit*

*dead*

Along with the official Phungo pack there were some extra Braves cards that just needed to get out of a Phillie phan's house apparently. Here's a Top 5:

I am now the world's foremost George Sherrill Supercollector. Nice Boston Braves throwback uni on this one.

Anyone remember Upper Deck Gold Glove? This rookie/debut/whatever of Horacio Ramirez was from the days where every rookie was short printed and serial numbered. OMG there are only 1000 of these cards in existence! Now they're all in quarter boxes untouched.

A few years later, the serial numbers are down to 3 digits. Still no one cares. If you look at all the cards Topps is tweeting to show off their 2014 set, you'll notice that they are mostly numbered to 10-99. Mark my words, by 2020 cards will have to be serial numbered to single digits in order to garner attention and by 2026, they won't print any cards at all. Now that's scarcity. I still like this set though, I think it looks classy.

Jason and Freddie yadda yadda horror movie joke. I probably have a half a dozen of this card but keep sending them because I'd like to wallpaper a room with them one day. And then set the building on fire when they both sign with the Yankees when they become free agents.

Ok you need to mentally prepare yourself for this next one. Take a seat, say your prayers and drink a couple quarts of gin.

You'd think this card came from Night Owl but you'd be wrong. This is now my third Warren Spahn card that has been defaced in some way, I wonder if it is possible to collect every Topps card of a Hall of Fame player where some kid drew all over it several decades ago. There's only one way to find out.

Thanks Phungo Co. for another brilliant card set! I look forward to seeing what 2015 Phungo holds in store!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

I have all my Heywards scanned and in a folder and when I look through them I am somewhat horrified by the number of parallels there are. I was worried about how I should post them because posting 8 different versions of a 2011 Topps base card is dreadfully boring. Then I stopped caring and decided to just post 'em all at once because no one else cares either. Not caring is very liberating! I bought a fair bit of 2007 BDP and got several Chromes and a Gold or two but not one Heyward base card which is ludicrous. Just like Bowman Draft Picks.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Of course I'm doing my New Year's Goals post three weeks into January. At least I haven't given up on my resolutions like a lot of people have already. I coulda sworn I had posted one of these things last year but looking over my first month's worth of posts it looks like my 2013 goal was "Fuck Topps, Get Non-Sports Cards". Judging by that criteria I was wildly successful last year. This year I'd like to gain some focus. I shall attempt this by writing everything down so I can immediately forget it and go do whatever the hell I want. Why should I remember it when it's written down? So, Goals. First obviously is focus on turning my dragon's hoard of cardboard into an actual collection of things. Here's how I intend to go about doing it:

GINTER

Allen & Ginter is literally the only modern baseball card set I give a flying feather about anymore. When Topps inevitably screws it up that'll probably be it for me. They haven't done it yet though so I'm going to go all in in 2014. I will complete all Ginter base sets from 2006-2013 before the 2014 set comes out. I'm doing a pretty good job on this so far this year. On January 1st I needed 172 cards for that Ginter run, now I need 47. I would prefer to trade for them or find them in the wild, but I've already hit up COMC for some singles and I'm not afraid to start looking online. All I gotta go if find 6 cards a month for 6 months and I'm golden, right?

VINTAGE

I have boxes and boxes and boxes of shiny cards from the junkwax era forward that I don't give a crap about. The old musty cardboard ones that are older than me I like. Time to focus more on those.When I look at that brand new pack of 2014 Topps in a couple of weeks I need to remember that 1956 Topps common I can pick up for the same price at a card show.

BARVES

My Braves collection is still a disaster after all these years. I've got a lot sorted by player, but even more are just sitting in monster boxes all mixed up. By the end of the year I want to have these damn things sorted and figure out something to do with them. I got autographs and relics hanging out in boxes full of garbage commons. I've decided on three things to do to help this situation.

The Topps team sets are all sorted, time to do the same for Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck and Score. All the rest can go pound sand right now, I don't have the time for Stadium Clubz and Pinnacles and SPs and all that mess. At the moment I'm thinking of an '81-'90 run for Donruss and Fleer, '89-'93 for Upper Deck and '88-'92 for Score. If I want to move forward with the rest of the sets after that, I can. I have a wild scheme in my mind of using up some of the oddball cards by putting together sets with one card per player per year of everyone on the Braves' roster ever. That's a longer term thing that I can think about after I get my other shizz in order though.

Two other things I need to do is get all the autograph and relic cards sorted and cataloged and do the same for current Braves players. Now that Kris Medlen is the Dean of the Braves this is an excellent opportunity to get every card I have of a current player cataloged since I don't have more than a hundred of any single player.

BUYING HABITS

No more fucking impulse buys of random packs because they're new or they look cool or they're 40% off or whatever. I have an assload of stupid cards I don't want or need because I wanted to open up some wax. I don't have the time or money for that anymore. There's honestly only three sets coming out in 2014 that I can say with certainty that I actually want: Panini World Cup Stickers, Ginter and the MLP CCG. Depending on how gimmicked up the set is this year, Ginter complete sets might be even cheaper than they were last year so I may just buy the thing outright and save money. Pony and Futbol packs I'll still pick up here and there. Last time I tried cold turkey it bombed when something shiny came along so I'll go on the sticker patch this time. Bottom line is collecting money is better spent on actual stuff I'm going to collect rather than on cardboard lottery tickets. Slipping is going to happen, so I'll set a goal of under 24 packs for the year. A couple packs a month for shits and giggles is reasonable. I may or may not decide to go the hobby wax box route depending on the set or the cheapness. And if I find a bunch of cheap junkwax for a quarter a pop at a show or something, then hell yeah, cheap wax. My main concern is to stop wasting money on full price retail crap.

NON-SPORTS

Thanks to a windfall, I managed to put together an instant Non-Sports collection last year. Quite a few complete sets and even more sets where I'm only missing a handful of cards. I got them all sorted and boxed and on a shelf. And I have no idea what I actually have because they aren't cataloged. I'd like to get at least a list of the complete sets I have together. I'd also like to get a list of partial sets I have. I'd also like to get wantlists up for these sets. If I spent a half hour a week on it instead of fucking around on Twitter (or while I fuck around on Twitter) I could probably knock it out rather quickly.

ORGANIZATION

This is the elbow grease section of this post. I have GOT to get a set of shelves replaced. I have two sets of really good shelves in my basement that have not been put together meanwhile a cheap metal shelf buckled on me last month. Gotta unlazy myself and get that replaced. There's also a bunch of boxes full of random junk mixed up with vintage cards, autos, inserts, random cards I scanned for the blog and threw in a box, 1/1s, T206s, all kinds of stuff. I'd like to get the wheat separated from the chaff this year. I'd also like to get the chaff separated by sport and tucked out of the way so I can have my office back. If there's any goal I'll fail this year, it'll be this one but one can dream.

CARD DISPERSAL

I have too many cards. I need to get rid of some. The best way to get rid of cards is to give them to people who actually want them. I have at least a dozen deals in the works, some probably from 2011 or earlier probably. Gotta send 'em out. Gonna send 'em out. The goal for this is three packages a month at bare minimum and see how many I get out this year. I have a list started of all my pending trades, if you think you should be on the list or just want some damn cards, tell me so I can add you to the list. My organizations skills are lacking so I need help. I'd also like to just flat out get RID of some stuff this year. Sell it at a garage sale/flea market/card show, sell 'em online, give 'em away, something. Just get 'em out of my house. I'll take suggestions on how to do that too.

So, to sum up, My 2014 goals:

Complete 2006-2013 Ginter by the time 2014 comes out, and finish that before the end of the year.

Pick up more vintage cards than new crap in 2014.

Complete at least 12 Braves Topps team sets.

Catalog all Braves MOJO cards.

Put together Braves team sets for Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck and Score.

Put together have lists for current Braves players.

Stop buying useless random baseball wax - under 24 packs.

Catalog Non-Sports sets and get wantlists up.

Get junk sorted and segregated away from the good stuff.

Send out at least 36 packages.

Get rid of some stuff I don't want or need by any means necessary.

My goals list goes to 11.

Some of this stuff I've already made a little headway on this month. Some, not so much. Who knows if I'll get to all of this or any of this, but at least I have something to shoot for now. If you read this far, I hope I might have given you some ideas on how to straighten up your ungodly mess of a collection as well.

As for the goals for the blog, well... screw the blog. I'm not shutting it down, I'm not running away to Tumblr or whatever the hell is popular now, but, yeah, fuck the blog. I'll still post shit here and there, but pretty much every blog-saving series of posts I've gotten excited about the past couple of years was dropped halfway through and never got finished. Actually, that's the entire history of the blog in one sentence. Not going to worry about it all that much anymore. Knowing me I'll probably post more often now that the pressure's off.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Friday, January 17, 2014

Just realized I haven't posted a Heyward all year. Better enjoy the Heywards while I can since the Barves are hell bent on paring their payroll down to Marlins levels by the time the new stadium (paid for with my tax dollars) opens. Not sure if I'll collect Yankee or Dodger Heyward cards. This might be the first Heyward I pulled out of a pack. Not entirely sure if this specific card was the actual first one since I opened quite a few boxes of this stuff looking for the Heyward auto and have a half a dozen of the base card. In all those boxes I pulled not even one of the color parallel cards. Not one. That's one way to do a parallel set I guess, make 'em so rare that bottom feeder collectors like myself never have to worry about them. The foil on the front doesn't scan worth a flop, but I rather enjoy the homage to 1968 Topps burlap on the back.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

It's not the first card of 2014 for me. I've picked up a few packs of the MLP CCG and snagged a grab bag of non-sports cards like American Pie, Golden Age and Americana. I've also gotten a pack of baseball cards from a certain blogger that I'll show off soon. This is the first baseball card I've bought this year. Got it for the price of a rack pack. I'll just show it off and let it speak for itself.

Monday, January 13, 2014

This isn't quite as awesome as SUPER CAT from 2012 but it's pretty nice. On October 28th, I went to Wal-Mart to buy something or other and ended up snagging a couple of packs of 2013 Topps Update. Inside was this:

Very nice! But redemption. Who knew when it would arrive? Who know if I would get that card at all? All redemption card stories online are nothing but tales of sorrow and woe, how could I avoid this miserable fate? I entered the code in the Topps redemption thingy and hoped for the best. Last Saturday this arrived:

Tom Glavine mini autograph card numbered 3/10. I never seem to have problems with redemptions. The only time in the past 10 years I didn't get what I was supposed to get (a Jesse Ventura relic) I got something equally cool (an Erik Estrada relic). I guess if I have to complain then, um... the edges are a little chippy? I guess? Like every other card with black borders? But honestly, who cares. It's an on-card autograph of a Hall of Famer that I'm never going to sell and will rot in my collection until my heirs dump all my cards on Craigslist when I croak.

This is a hella nice looking card, too bad there's only 10 of them. Tom's not in the mini base set, so take a good long look, this is the only one you're likely to see. I like that career stat line on the back, and also the authenticity legalese that is cleverly integrated in the '71 design. Can you find it kids? The only thing that could make this card better is one of those old hologram stickers that Topps used to plaster on their autograph and relic cards 10 years ago.

So a pretty good pull for 2013 considering my pack buying habits dropped drastically last year. Will I find anything this good in a pack in 2014? Will I even buy any packs in 2014? We got 11 and a half months to find out.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Frank Thomas was my favorite non-Brave player in the '90s. The Braves selected Tyler Houston one pick before Frank. Can you imagine if Frank Thomas was the Braves' first baseman in the '90s? I can. It's my reality now. Frank Thomas has always played for the Braves. My doctors keep telling me to take my meds but I'm really much happier like this.

I spent so damn much money in the early '90s buying overpriced 1990 Score packs chasing this card and I never pulled it from a single pack ever. Ben McDonalds I pulled. Chuck Knoblauchs I pulled. Even Tyler Houstons I pulled. Not. One. Frank. Then a couple years ago I bought the complete 1990 Score set for $5. In a binder. Selah.

Unless you collected cards in the '90s you have no idea how amazingly cool Studio Heritage inserts were. This one from 1994 showing Frank in a Sox uniform from the '30s with the sepia photo of Comiskey in the background on textured paper stock with a touch of foil for class is almost too amazing for words.

I have a Thomas autograph, but this bizarre Upper deck insert that combines a see through acetate window with a super thin layer of printed wood all glued together and threatening to curl up like some 2010 Chrome is just so incredibly neat. It's also one of the few cards I can distinctly remember where I was when I pulled it from the pack. (at a Kroger in Marietta with my grandmother, to be exact)

I know what you are all thinking. How can I be happy that Glavine is being inducted after all the crap I gave him on this blog. Easy. I'm a dirty hypocrite and since Liberty Media is slowly but surely turning the Braves into the Marlins North, I'll take what happiness I can get.

Tom Glavine.... PLAYING HOCKEY. Madness! Score knew how to make super-cool cards. I wish we had a Score today.

I have a lot of crazy looking '90s inserts of Tommy Glavine, but the Dufex Stare is just too cool.

Yes, yes, yes. This is technically a Mets card. It's also numbered 5/10 and has two of the more interesting patches in my collection. I'm pretty sure the Braves patch is from a throwback uniform they wore, but I'm clueless on the Mets patch. Pretty danged interesting at any rate.

I scheduled this post for 2:00 pm to coincide with the Hall of Fame induction announcment. Right now I'm probably weeping with joy at my desk at work because Maddux is a Hall of Famer. If Tommy got in too I'm probably howling. If Maddux beat Seaver's vote percentage record I'm probably pumping my fist. And maybe dancing on my laptop if Frank got in too. Naked, probably. I'm probably getting escorted from the building right now actually. Who cares, Greg's a legend.

I'm posting three cards from each player who gets inducted today. One Iconic card (to me at least), one cool looking card and one for the Mojo lovers. I'm spreading the posts out a bit so I can quickly delete posts and/or scan cards when I get home tonight. I'm posting Greg first because if he doesn't get in I'm setting Cooperstown on fire.

My favorite Maddux card by far. Yeah, it's just a SI cover in card form but it's a helluva SI cover. And absolutely correct. I do kind of wonder who the next Jerry Rice is now.

This isn't the actual insert but a promo card I got in 1996 at the best card shop I will ever go to.The story is quite odd, some guy wandered in the shop (a distributor I guess?) gave a few of these cards to the shop owner and he immediately gave one to me. It's a very lovely looking fake painty canvassy looking thing in person.

A relic card from back when relic cards actually meant something. This isn't the first relic card I ever owned but it's the first relic card I hunted down like a dog and spent too much money on. I don't know how much it's worth today but it's priceless as far as I'm concerned.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Just because I've given up on trying to complete Topps Heritage doesn't mean I've given up on trying to complete the Braves sets. As with all Braves team sets, I'm almost positive I have some of these hiding in Braves boxes but here's what is not actually in the binder.

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About Me

One man's tireless crusade to promote card collecting as an addictive alternative to more pharmacological pursuits. Remember kids: Do Drugs, Cards have gotten entirely too stupid. Or don't, see if I care when you RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER

Dayf the Blogger has a Posse

My original crappy neglected blog what I'm trying to resurrect this year

Note on the Blogroll

If you have a blog, and it ain't on here, LET ME KNOW! There are a lot of good blogs I'm missing out on. I'm also very forgetful and sometimes forget to put it on the list even if I do find a good one. If your blog is about cards or trading or sports in general I'll fit it in, but don't try to sneak your blog about politics or cats or crop rotation in the 14th century on here.